


cutting teeth

by stillscape



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25326379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: She notices him. It’s hard not to, when he’s at her home so often.“I’m here to get my dad,” he’ll say, shrugging his shoulders like it’s shameful for them to acknowledge each other outside school.(ANormal People-inspired AU.)
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 133
Kudos: 209
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	1. seventeen/eighteen/nineteen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sullypants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/gifts).



> Dearest Sullypants. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 
> 
> (Thanks to skeptic and heavy-lies-the-crown for the read-throughs and the encouragement)
> 
> **bughead endgame** , but it's a bumpy road.

**(seventeen/eighteen)**

  
  
  
  
  
  


They roam the same halls and take the same classes, but they do not travel in the same circles. In fact, Betty thinks he may not travel in circles at all.  _ She _ travels in circles, orbiting between school and friends and family and extracurriculars with the utmost precision. Her circles loop and interlink: a spirograph, she is, following a path that feigns originality but has always been predetermined. 

He seems to move in lines: sometimes undulating like waves, sometimes rough and jagged. The path taken by Jughead Jones is so rarely precise. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She notices him. It’s hard not to, when he’s at her home so often.

“I’m here to get my dad,” he’ll say, shrugging his shoulders like it’s shameful for them to acknowledge each other outside school. 

Betty will nod; Betty will gesture him inside. “He’s still finishing up,” she will say, nodding towards the window, where F.P. labors endlessly on whatever home improvement project her mother has envisioned this week. 

They will end up in the big Cooper kitchen, sipping root beers and leaning against countertops, until the day Jughead says  _ I like hanging out with you _ and then  _ Also, _ and Betty says  _ What, _ and then they lean into each other instead. 

They will not tell anyone. He is a social pariah—by his own choice, Betty thinks, or at least more by his own choice than he’s prepared to admit. In the corridors of Riverdale High, he deliberately does not look at her. All the other boys look. She’s a cheerleader, she’s traveling in a pack of cheerleaders; he’s  _ supposed _ to look. 

She remembers the speech he gave in the lunchroom last year, apropos of absolutely nothing.  _ I’m weird. I’m a weirdo. _

He isn’t, not really. He is fiercely smart and sharply funny. He is handsome in a way no one notices, because he does not let anyone notice. 

(She would think he doesn’t want anyone to notice him in any way whatsoever, were it not for his habit of arguing volubly with their teachers about everything from the ending of  _ The Great Gatsby  _ to their apparently fascist phys ed requirement to what size of font is appropriate for the front of the school paper.) 

Betty notices. She isn’t supposed to find him attractive, per Veronica and Cheryl and—well, every other member of the River Vixens. She understands this so well that she does not bring it up, ever. 

Jughead’s teeth are a little crooked; it’s common knowledge that his dad couldn’t afford to get him braces. Jughead’s hair is shaggy and thick, and often greasy; Betty just  _ knows _ it would be beautiful, should he wash and blow-dry it on even a semi-regular basis. 

He wears a black beaded bracelet on one wrist, always. 

He wears the dumb hat, always, except when she takes it off. 

Except when she takes it off, and they crash into each other in her bed; frantic, always, but time still slows when they touch. A current flows between them, through her. She wonders whether he feels it as strongly as she does: electricity, prickling through every nerve ending her body has to offer. 

She falls, panting, against the too-pink sheets. 

“I should go,” he says. She wants to tell him  _ no, _ wants to tell him  _ stay. _

When people imagine Betty’s life, they imagine everything comes easily to her. She knows this. Her father may be out of the picture, but her mother is well off. She is smart; she’ll be going to Yale. She is never without a friend in the halls, never without a date to the dances. 

The only thing that truly comes easily to Betty is faking normalcy, and the only person who’s ever noticed as much is Jughead. They talked about it, once, when they were alone in the Blue & Gold office. But then the rest of the staff came in, and they went back to standing on opposite sides of the room, pretending they merely tolerated each others’ presence. 

Now, Jughead dresses. Still on her back, staring at the ceiling, Betty feels his absence before he’s even left the room. 

What must he think of her? What must he write about her, when he writes about her—or does he write about her at all? 

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s unlike her, to lust so openly; it’s unlike her to lust at all. She has been on dates with boys, and been kissed by boys, and kissed them back. 

Or so she would have said, until she and Jughead began whatever  _ this  _ is. Now she knows she was never kissed before. Now she knows she had never kissed back. 

She let Reggie Mantle see her breasts, once, and felt nothing. Feeling nothing felt wrong, and so she did not let Reggie Mantle see her breasts again. 

Jughead only has to cast the slightest of glances at her clothed form to make her whole body come humming to life. His glances make her nervous. They make her sweat. She is always in control, always put together, always perfect. Jughead—Jughead makes her feel desperate, and a desperate person cannot possibly be in control. 

She falls back against the old plaid couch in the Jones trailer. When he catches her eye afterwards, an apology hovers around him, buzzing and unspoken. She understands, maybe. A nice Northside girl deserves better. Deserves sheets, at least. 

Betty is sure she deserves something, but sheets are far too specific, far too quotidian, to make a difference one way or another. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“I asked Reggie to the prom.” 

“You asked Reggie to the prom.” 

“He said yes,” she says, and then, “You wouldn’t have gone.” 

She wonders, once again, if he  _ would _ have gone, had she asked. She thinks back and knows, with one hundred percent certainty, that he has never given her any reason to believe that he would have. 

Betty’s head tips to one side, gently; the perfect curl at the end of her ponytail sways. Her eyes are thoughtful, doe-like, innocent. She is not innocent, a fact that no one knows but him; Reggie called her a prude, after she’d put her bra back on. She wonders if Jughead is possessive of that knowledge, or protective of it, or whether he considers it a non-event, or whether he’s ever thought about it at all beyond their first time, when she’d told him it was  _ her  _ first time and he’d blinked, surprised, before he said  _ mine too. _

Even now, when anger simmers under her skin, that knowledge makes her hungry. 

“Right,” he says. 

She blinks. 

“I’ll see you around, then, Jughead?” 

“Right,” he says, again. 

She slides from the front seat of his pickup truck. She bangs the door behind her. She does not look back. 

They will not see each other around, unless they do. 

Riverdale is a small town. They will see each other around. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**(eighteen/nineteen)**

They do not see each other around. He makes sure of that.

He knows she knows he is off to New Haven in the fall, too. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The first few days at Yale feel like a fever dream, steeped in hot coffee that’s been laced with cheap rum. F.P. either can’t or won’t drive him down, so he travels via a series of buses and trains that seems to take forever, then has a moderate panic attack when he arrives at Union Station and can’t immediately figure out how to find the Uber driver who will take him to campus. 

He begins meeting people, starting with his new roommate Archie, and Archie’s parents. The Andrews clan is a perfect nuclear family of three, it seems. Of course both parents came to move Archie into the dorm. That’s not a surprise. The surprise comes when they insist Jughead accompany them on a walk around campus, with Archie’s mom Mary reminiscing about favorite spots from her own undergraduate career and wistfully lamenting changes to campus made in her absence. Archie’s dad, Fred—a construction worker, like Jughead’s own (though unlike Jughead’s dad, he owns his own company)—stays mostly silent but basks in the palpable aura emanating from Yale’s architecture. 

For Jughead, who hadn’t been able to afford to visit before he accepted his offer and put down his deposit, the campus is almost a parody of what he’d imagined the Ivy League experience to be: old stone and arches, newer buildings and green spaces. Hundreds of years of scholarship are infused in the buildings between which he now walks. The buildings in which—according to the nameless, faceless members of the Yale admissions committee—he now  _ belongs.  _

A cold shiver runs down his spine.

They stand in front of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and he thinks it might be the closest thing to a religious experience he’s ever had. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Prepared as he was to thoroughly dislike whatever poor soul was doomed to spend a year sharing bunk beds with him, he finds instead that he likes Archie quite a bit. On paper, they should not get along. Archie had acquired a bro-posse within twenty-four hours of his parents’ departure. Archie is on the football team. Once classes begin, Archie seems to spend more time playing guitar in the courtyard below their window than he does actually  _ going  _ to said classes. 

(Jughead remembers Mary Andrews sighing happily at the sight of her old residential college—the one he and Archie will move into next year—and somehow does not resent the fact that his roommate  _ clearly  _ only got into Yale as a legacy.) 

Archie is popular with girls, and Jughead braces himself for the day Betty Cooper appears below their window. He thinks—no, he  _ knows— _ that she is too bright to fall for Archie’s charms. 

Then again, maybe she is not. Then again, maybe he does not know her at all. In any case, she does not appear below their window. 

  
  


  
  
  
  


Then again, he has far more important things to think about than girls, even though suddenly, girls seem to be thinking about him more than he cares to understand. At Riverdale High, his tendencies to have his face covered by a book and his fingers covered in typewriter ink had been a liability. Here, those traits seem to make him mysterious instead of off-putting. Girls flirt with him in the classroom, in the cafeteria, at his work-study job at the Film Study Center. That he is not interested in them seems only to fuel their interest in him. 

(Boys flirt with Jughead, too, sometimes. He has even less interest in figuring out what to do about that.) 

There are so many things more important than dating. 

Jughead has heard of impostor syndrome. Before, in Riverdale, it seemed abstract. He understood intellectually that some people might feel they weren’t good enough for the situations in which they found themselves, but he did not feel that way himself. He understood a lot of things intellectually. He was the smart kid. He knew college would be different; he looked forward to college being different. 

It takes only one week of classes for Jughead to understand impostor syndrome not just intellectually, but viscerally. 

(Well. He had felt it before, but in a much different way. He had felt it every time Betty trembled beneath him, or came undone atop him; he had felt it every time they kissed. Every time he looked at their naked bodies together—her exquisite profile, her perfect breasts—and thought, simply,  _ how?)  _

_ If the Riverdale High teachers could see me now,  _ he thinks, gritting his teeth as he walks into yet another seminar in which he will be too uncertain to speak his mind. Yale is a big pond, full of sharks who’ve downgraded their prep school blazers to fitted button-downs or artfully ripped jeans that seem no less expensive. Jughead’s wardrobe has not changed in the slightest since high school; his jeans are ripped because, well, they ripped. He twists his bracelets around his wrist and finds it’s all too easy to feel as though he is barely a fish at all. 

There is only one thing for it, and that is to work harder. By the end of the second week of classes, he thinks that in addition to impostor syndrome, he might also be developing carpal tunnel syndrome from all the notes he’s typed. By the end of the third week of classes, he thinks that come December, he might need to be surgically removed from his favorite study carrel. 

(This is not such a bad thing, considering the number of times Archie has oh-so-considerately texted something along the lines of  _ Can I have the room for a couple hours?) _

“Kicking ass at the Ivy League, huh, boy?” asks his father, over the phone. “The first Jones to go to college, and there you are at Yale.” 

“Yep,” he says, not knowing how else to respond. Sharing his feelings with his father seems beyond impossible. 

“Can’t wait to rub it in Alice’s face,” he adds. “Though I’m sure Betty’s kicking ass too. She doesn’t know how not to. How’s she doing?” 

Jughead swallows before answering. “Haven’t seen her.” 

There is a long, long pause. 

“Thought she was your girlfriend.” 

“No.” 

“Thought there was something between you two, at least.” 

Sighing, Jughead drags a hand over his forehead. “There wasn’t.” 

“You got another girl?” asks his father, and Jughead sighs once more. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


October second comes and goes. No one here knows it’s his birthday, except for Betty. But then, Betty knows he hates his birthday. Betty knows to avoid it.

Nineteen is an insignificant age, anyway. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Finally, one day, he snaps. He’s done the reading; this Bret kid clearly has not, or hasn’t taken the time to try and understand it, and there is only so much Jughead Jones can take. 

Bret glares. The professor dismisses the class with a legal pad held over her mouth; behind her round wire spectacles, her eyes seem to twinkle. Is she laughing at him? He tries to banish the thought from his mind—easy enough to do, since one of the other frequent talkers is sidling up to him. 

“Forsythe, right?” 

“I go by Jughead.” 

The kid—Adam, his name is—blinks, then stands up straight. “Cool. So, Jughead. I know it’s more than halfway through the semester already, but do you have any interest in joining the debate team?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead does not have any interest in joining the debate team. He has some interest in perhaps joining one of Yale’s numerous literary journals, though every issue he’s picked up so far has contained (in his opinion) too much blank verse and not enough longform crime reporting. 

Adam shrugs off the rejection. He’s a nice guy, or at least, he wears niceness like it’s an expensive fitted button-down. “Not for everyone,” he says, genially, and then invites Jughead to an off-campus rager that weekend. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


How long has it been since Jughead last saw Betty Cooper? Four months? Five? 

In those months, in that interval, he feels he has changed not at all, and she has changed considerably. 

He thinks this in part because the moment she laid eyes on him, she smiled broadly, said “Jughead Jones!”, and led him into the apartment’s kitchen—but not before she’d grasped Adam Chisholm by the elbow and nuzzled an affectionate kiss into his cheek. 

“Jughead and I went to high school together,” she explains, without further embellishment. This is enough to encourage Adam to wave them off into privacy with some nonsense about wanting to catch up, as though two people who went to high school together couldn’t possibly have kept in touch by any other means. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“You look good, Jug,” she says, once they’re seated across from each other at a cheap faux-wood table lined with empties. 

He takes a swig of his beer before responding. “Classic, right? I go to college and get…” The word  _ pretty _ floats through his mind. “Attractive,” he says instead, though whether he is or isn’t is irrelevant, considering Betty and Adam are clearly together.

“You were always attractive,” she mutters, brow furrowed.

Jughead twists his bracelet around his wrist and says nothing. 

Betty sits up straight and squares her shoulders. “So, tell me how things have been. What college did you get assigned to? What classes are you taking? How’s your roommate? How’s your dad?” 

“Fine, I guess. We haven’t talked much.” 

They chat without Jughead really grasping what it is they’re chatting about, or at least, not at first.

In the months since he last saw Betty, she seems to have loosened. Her hair is down now, loose around her shoulders. She’s got  _ bangs _ —not the blunt, straight-across kind seen on little kids with pigtails, but the sideswept kind, the kind that make her look like she’s just come in from a walk on the beach. She’s wearing looser, flowy clothing instead of a clingy sweater; she’s wearing impractically large earrings instead of her normal tiny studs. 

Normal? Maybe oversized earrings are normal for her now. Maybe they always were, or maybe she always wanted them to be, and he just never realized. 

But once he accepts the slight change in her appearance, the new relaxation in her demeanor, he finds she is the same Betty he knew before. Perhaps she has always been waiting to be this Betty, out from under the Eye of Sauron also known as Alice Cooper. 

Perhaps they’ve simply never really  _ talked  _ before, he thinks. All those conversations in her kitchen, before they started hooking up—he’d thought those were real, at the time. Now he isn’t sure he knows what real is, and he’s not just boarding that train of thought because he’s halfway through a second beer. 

“So, you and Adam,” he says. 

Betty smiles. Perhaps it’s the flush of alcohol impeding his cognition, but Jughead thinks he sees the smile peter out before it reaches her eyes.

“Me and Adam,” she agrees. 

They work so well on paper. Even he can see that. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Perhaps on paper is the only place they do work, because a mere week after the off-campus rager, Adam walks into their seminar looking as though he hasn’t slept since. 

Under the table, during what is supposed to be a workshop of someone’s essay draft, Jughead begins composing a text message to Betty. 

_ Everything okay?  _

He erases it.  _ Hey, how are you?  _ He erases that too.  _ Want to grab coffee?  _ No.  _ What’s up with Adam? _

Adam leaves the seminar room in silence. Jughead leaves the seminar room without having sent a single text. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He stays in New Haven for Thanksgiving, citing “financial hardship” as the reason he can’t travel. It’s bullshit, of course. He could afford it; he’s sure his dad would pay for him to get home, if he asked. 

“You could come home with me,” Archie offers. But Archie’s parents are in Chicago. Archie is flying home. Jughead has no idea how Archie has worked out that a plane ticket to Chicago would somehow be cheaper than a bus ticket to Riverdale. 

(Nevertheless, he appreciates the offer.) 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he hangs out with Betty and her crew, as it were, a few times. Adam is always there, his arm possessively around Betty’s waist or her shoulder. Sometimes she throws it off, the better to pace around whatever room they’re in and gesticulate broadly. She’s always been a hand-talker; she’d knocked over more pencil cups in the Blue and Gold office than he could count. 

Then one day she throws his hand off, grabs his arm, and drags him outside the room, a rather murderous set to her jaw. 

Betty comes back a few minutes later. Adam does not. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


A few days before winter break begins, Jughead gets a text from Pop Tate, his old boss, offering him his choice of shifts over the holidays if he’s looking for some extra cash.

(He is always looking for extra cash. Typewriter ribbons do not pay for themselves. Nor do print credits, for that matter. Nor do endless refills from the campus coffee shops…) 

He turns in his last research papers of the semester electronically, which is no fun; he’d fantasized about the satisfaction of dropping a large stack of paper onto an old oak desk. Then he says farewell to Archie, throws an assortment of his unwashed laundry and a couple of books into his duffle bag, and hikes the mile and a half to Union Station. 

He scans the lobby crowd. Just in case. 

There is no sign of her. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Riverdale is a small town. They will see each other around. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The only surprising thing about running into Betty at Pop’s is that  _ when  _ he runs into Betty at Pop’s, she is alone. 

Jughead is alone, too; the hour is late, a light snow has started falling, and he’s leaning on his elbows on the counter, reading  _ Trust Exercise _ , when the door opens with its familiar little tinkle. 

“Hey, Jug.” 

He scrambles to shut his book; he fidgets with his bracelet; he wishes he didn’t have a mustard stain on his apron. 

(He wishes he wasn’t wearing an apron.)

“Hey.” 

Betty removes her coat and hangs it on the rack by the front door. Underneath it, she has returned to High School Betty: fitted sweater, skinny jeans, her go-to gray suede boots. A perky ponytail bobs at the back of her head. Three tiny studs dot each of her earlobes. 

“You’re here by yourself?” 

Jughead nods. “Sit wherever you like.” 

She takes a seat at the counter, and he makes her a grilled cheese sandwich, a little burned around the edges, just the way he knows she likes it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She’s still there when his shift ends; she gets up to leave when Jughead’s replacement comes in, and they walk through the diner’s doors together, sort of. 

“The snow’s really coming down now,” she says. “I hope it sticks around. I’d like a white Christmas.” 

Jughead nods, and pulls his sherpa jacket closer around his neck. He wishes he owned a scarf. 

“I’d better go,” he says. 

Betty’s brow furrows. “Where’s your truck?” 

“Dad’s got the truck.” 

“Did you  _ walk?  _ For god’s sake, Jug.” She shakes her head. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to— 

“I dumped Adam.” 

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. I mean, I wondered if you had.” 

She stares straight ahead, concentrating hard on the road.

“Didn’t you go out with anyone at all this semester?” 

“You know I didn’t.” 

“No, I didn’t know that. Why not?” 

He shrugs, which she may or may not be able to see. “Too busy trying not to flunk out, I guess.” 

Betty snorts. “Come on. You and I both figured out right away that the native intelligence of most Ivy League students has been greatly exaggerated.” 

“Perhaps,” he concedes. “But I still had to do the work.” 

“Now you sound like me,” she says, cracking the tiniest of smiles.

  
  
  
  
  
  


His father is not home. 

She pushes Jughead onto the couch, straddling him like she’s done so many times before and kissing him like there’s no tomorrow. He feels so intensely perfect that he doesn’t even wonder—not until she’s gone, and he’s alone in the dark—whether the sex she had with Adam was any good. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He can’t imagine it could have been  _ that  _ good. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He doesn’t want to imagine it at all. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He writes about her instead. Again. Still. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Always. 

  
  
  
  
  


**(to be continued…)**


	2. nineteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: It's a one-shot  
> me: It's two chapters  
> me: it's four chapters?
> 
> Thanks to village-skeptic and heavy-lies-the-crown <3

**(nineteen)**

  
  
  
  
  
  


There is a version of Betty Cooper’s life in which her father does not abandon their family. 

In this version of her life, they still live in California. Betty’s older sister does not rebel so furiously that her mother gives up and sends her away to boarding school in upstate New York. Betty and her mother do not move to Riverdale just before Betty starts middle school to be closer to Polly, who will subsequently run away from said boarding school the moment she turns sixteen, return to California, and join some weird hippie commune (read: cult) that seems likely to one day become the focus of a Netflix documentary series. 

In this version of her life, Betty does not let everyone assume her father has passed away when she says “He’s no longer with us.” She does not carefully construct her entire persona around the illusion of normalcy. 

In this version of Betty Cooper’s life, she does not meet Jughead Jones. 

Or perhaps she would have met him, just not during high school. At Yale, their paths might have crossed—if they’d both ended up there in this alternate timeline, of course. 

That alternate version of her life exists, but not for her. It exists for some other Betty, in some other time and space, and since it does not exist for her, it is not worth the energy to think about. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


In the version of Betty Cooper’s life that she is actually living, she opens the Christmas card her sister sends her every year. It’s the only communication Polly usually bothers to make. Half  _ hope you’re well _ missive, half bid for Betty, too, to cut off all ties with their one remaining parent and join her sister.

But this year, there is news. Polly has been wed. Polly is pregnant. The wording is such that Betty is unsure of which event happened first, or whether it matters. 

This is the last card she will send Betty, she says. The cult is, as Polly puts it, “going underground.” Betty utilizes every undercover journalism skill she learned from working on her high school paper, every investigative skill she learned from Tracey True novels, and every research knack she’s developed from a lifetime of overidentification with Hermione Granger. She cannot find a single trace of her sister anywhere on the internet. 

Alice Cooper weeps for the remainder of Betty’s time at home. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


In the version of Betty Cooper’s life that she is actually living, she returns to Yale for her second semester, makes an appointment with her adviser, and officially declares herself a psychology major.

All her life, Betty has felt the calling of a specific purpose, without being able to identify exactly what that purpose is. Polly’s total disappearance changes that. Purpose crystallizes in front of Betty’s very eyes. The teeth of her internal Spirograph crumble. She has always been driven; now she knows where her road is going. 

Back in her dorm room, she takes out a fresh index card, writes a single word in block letters with her freshest Sharpie, and pins the card to the corkboard behind her desk. 

_ Quantico.  _

Betty Cooper  _ will _ join the FBI. Someday. She will find her sister. She will find her niece or nephew.

  
  
  
  
  


She finds herself behind Adam Chisolm in line at an off-campus coffee shop one day. He nods and says  _ Betty _ and she nods and says  _ Adam,  _ and that’s all there is to it. 

While she stirs a swirl of cinnamon into her latte, she thinks about Adam. His hands pawing at her breasts. His tongue, too hot and too wet when he kissed her. 

(His dick: fine, she supposes, but nothing to write home about. He hadn’t wielded it with a whole lot of skill.) 

_ The sex wasn’t very good,  _ she’d told Veronica, at home over winter break.  _ It wasn’t terrible or anything. It just wasn’t very good.  _

Veronica had nodded, wisely. Sagely.  _ Almost no one’s first time is great, but that’s why we experiment when we’re young. The best advice I can give you is to figure out what gets you off, and refuse to have anything to do with anyone who isn’t willing to try those things.  _

At that point, Betty had flushed pink, and found herself grateful when Veronica took it as a sign that she was embarrassed. 

She had not been embarrassed. She had been thinking about what Jughead Jones had done to her just one short hour ago. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She realizes that it will take at least five more years before she is even eligible to apply for the FBI. 

In the meantime, she will do Jughead Jones a favor.  _ Please,  _ he says, and Betty finds herself powerless to say no. She will tutor Jughead’s roommate, who is on academic probation, and of whom Jughead is inexplicably fond. 

Jughead has the top bunk, and he’s stretched out there now, in ancient pajama bottoms and a brand-spanking-new Yale hoodie, half reading a mildewed 1940s pulp novel that came from who knows where. 

“For a start, Archie,” he says, not even looking up, “you should consider attending your classes.” 

Archie looks appropriately sheepish, with a blush creeping up from his collar to his ears. 

“I meant to. I did. I just…” He spreads out his hands. “College is  _ hard.”  _

“Were you not expecting it to be?” 

“Jug,” Betty says, adding a slight note of admonishment to her voice although, frankly, she agrees with Jughead. “He’s right, though, Archie. You can’t skip. You have to start going to office hours, too, and emailing your professor and your teaching assistants with questions, and—” 

The look he gives her is so pitiful that she feels she’s just slapped a puppy. 

“And I’ll help,” she adds, sighing a little. “Jughead will, too. Won’t you?” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


At the end of their second session together, Archie leans in as though he intends to kiss her. She realizes as much at the last possible second. 

“Archie,” she says, gently but firmly, as she pulls away. “Please don’t.” 

“I’m sorry. I thought…” He scrunches into his broad shoulders, turns his hands so the palms face up. 

He has rough hands, scratched from football and calloused from his guitar. Betty imagines them brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. She imagines them on the skin of her bare waist. She imagines Archie’s hands, but they are not Archie’s hands. The imaginary hands on her waist have ink stains, not callouses. 

Summoning all her diplomacy, she says, “Maybe you should try the school’s official tutoring service.” 

“I’m using it already. They’re not as good at explaining things as you are, I—oh,  _ shit,  _ Betty. Are you and Jug—” 

Betty raises her eyebrows. 

“I mean, he never said. I thought you were friends.” 

“We are friends.” This comes out so easily that she wonders whether it can possibly be the truth. 

“I meant  _ just  _ friends,” Archie elaborates. 

“You know it’s not a good thing to hit on your tutor regardless of whether or not she’s seeing someone, right?” 

Archie turns red again, from which Betty deduces that he has in fact been using the tutoring service more for matchmaking than homework assistance. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


If she and Jughead are friends, they are certainly more than  _ just  _ friends. He comes to her dorm, sometimes, when her roommate is out, or she goes to his, sometimes, when Archie isn’t there. They fuck, and they talk, but neither she nor Jughead seems to be willing to officially declare their fucking and talking a  _ relationship.  _

She wants, so very desperately, for Jughead to tell her that he wants a  _ relationship.  _ She wants him to tell her that he loves her. She wants— 

She wants what she wants, but her stubborn streak will not let her make the first move. Perhaps the first concession is a better way to put it, considering that they are, in fact, talking and fucking regularly. 

_ Jughead  _ is the one who’d said he didn’t want a girlfriend.  _ Jughead  _ is the one who wouldn’t look at her in the hallways of Riverside High. Jughead, now, is the one who needs to ask  _ her _ . 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“May I?” he asks her, and she nods furiously, her lower lip numb from where she’s clenched it between her teeth. 

“You don’t need to ask, Jug.” She gasps, once, as his tongue swirls expert circles around her clit. “You never need to ask.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Valerie is cool in a way Betty knows she will never be, no matter how often she borrows Val’s earrings. In high school, Betty was  _ popular,  _ but popular is not  _ cool,  _ a fact she had understood previously but never fully appreciated until she moved into the dorms and met her roommate. 

They get along well, despite their inherent differences. Perhaps they are not great friends, but they can co-exist in a small space without much effort, and that’s more than a lot of roommates can say. They are both  _ considerate.  _ This makes all the difference in the world. 

Valerie is cool, and Betty is uncool, and though Betty desperately wants to know whether Val would be cool with Jughead spending the night in their room sometimes, she is too considerate to bring it up. 

She waits for Jughead to invite her to spend the night in his room, at least once. She would be shocked if  _ Archie  _ spent every night there, so perhaps during one of his absences… 

But she is considerate, and trying to be cool, and so she tries desperately to be cool about the fact that Jughead does not invite her to stay. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Two people in a twin extra-long would be uncomfortable, anyway. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Spring break comes, and Betty goes. For their first  _ college _ spring break, Veronica and Cheryl are pulling out all the stops: not Florida, not Mexico, not even the Caribbean will do. The River Vixens are reuniting, and they are doing so at a small, private Italian villa surrounded by rolling green hills.  _ Paradise,  _ Veronica had called it, and she is by no means wrong. 

Her familiar old bikini doesn’t fit quite as it had last summer. It’s fine; she’s fine, if a bit less fit than she had been at the peak of her high school career. Everything simply seems to have shifted in ways she hasn’t noticed until now. The little demon in the back of her mind waits for a note that might be latched onto, understood as criticism, but none are forthcoming, not even from Cheryl. 

“You look pale,” she says, with a slight frown. “I suppose Connecticut is hardly known for its tropical springtime climes. Never fear, my dear cousin. I’ve brought all the sunscreen we could possibly require for a week of poolside relaxation.” 

Next to her, Veronica sighs dreamily. “Six days of nothing. No responsibilities. No men. No boys pretending to be men.” 

“No girls pretending to be women,” Cheryl adds. “Just the three of us, and all the sangria we can drink.” 

Veronica raises her glass, which is already coated in a light sheen of sweat.  _ “Salute  _ to that.” 

  
  
  
  
  


But Betty is not built for six days of doing nothing by the pool. By the end of the first day, she is restless; by the end of the second, she has traded her bikini and flip-flops for cutoff shorts and old sneakers. She roams the surrounding hills alone, the gentle sun falling golden on her skin. She finds an old blanket and folds it into a straw tote with a water bottle and a sandwich made with ridiculously good prosciutto and mozzarella and the best tomatoes she’s ever tasted. 

(It’s not even tomato season. She knows that. Still.) 

They’re in Tuscany, not Naples, but the Elena Ferrante volume she’s tucked into her backpack feels appropriate nevertheless. She spends half the day with Lenù and Lila and returns for an evening with Veronica and Cheryl, gratitude for this time they have together pulsing through her veins. 

  
  
  
  
  


She wakes in the middle of the night. Unable to fall back asleep, she walks barefoot to the villa’s pool. Water shimmering peacefully beside her, she climbs onto a deck chair, hugs her knees to her chest, and tilts her chin up to search the skies. 

Though Betty never went through the amateur astronomer phase so many of her peers did—she preferred to keep her feet on the ground, and her eyes with them—she dutifully memorized all the major constellations, as any good Girl Scout equipped with a small telescope and a desire to earn as many badges as humanly possible was wont to do. The knowledge lingers, not consciously recalled, but there nevertheless. 

Cassiopeia catches her eye first. She traces its points with her gaze; she imagines, absurdly, tracing them with her lips. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


_ No responsibilities,  _ Veronica had said. In truth, none of the three of them are built for six days of doing nothing by the pool. By the end of the fourth day, laptops have been unpacked and textbooks have been cracked. Veronica still wears a bathing suit and light cover-up, but also her glasses; loose hair spills into her face every so often as she taps away at her keyboard. Cheryl still wears a bathing suit and light cover-up too; today she has claimed one of the patio lounge chairs, where she reclines in the shade, flooding the margins of Virginia Woolf’s  _ Orlando  _ with blood-red ink. 

For a long moment, Betty considers composing a missive to Jughead. But what would she say?  _ Having a great time! Wish you were here!  _

No. 

Instead, she sucks her lower lip between her teeth and bites down hard before continuing with her summer internship applications. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“You’re tan,” he says. 

“So are you.” Betty lets her gaze drift over his bare arms and torso. The first time she saw Jughead shirtless, she was surprised, very pleasantly so; nothing about Jughead had ever given her an indication that lean muscle lay underneath his layers. Unlike her full-body tan, Jughead’s ends mid-bicep. “Did you spend your spring break farming?” 

“Very funny.” He refrains from laughing; he unbuttons his pants. “The weather was good. I took some walks.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead is the first person she tells, in part because he is the first person she sees. The intended first recipient of her news is her mother, but she happens upon Jughead on her way out of the library, parked in his usual study carrel with his usual enormous headphones. 

She taps him on the shoulder; his scowl quickly fades to a near-smile when he sees it’s her, and he pulls the headphones down around his neck. 

“Look.” Her voice is proud as she holds out her phone; she doesn’t bother to try and tamp down that pride. 

Jughead reads the email on her screen. His scowl returns. 

“You’re going to intern in Washington over the summer?” 

She nods. “In the senator’s office.” 

“I thought you were declaring a psych major.” 

“I  _ did  _ declare a psych major. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to experience the inner workings of the federal government first-hand.” 

“So you’ll be in D.C. the whole time?” 

“Minus a week on each end, yeah.”

Jughead hands her the phone back, and she clicks the display off before shoving it into the back pocket of her jeans. 

“What, Jug?” 

He shrugs. “Nothing.” His voice is a studied, careful neutral. “Congratulations.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She imagines herself climbing the steps of the Capitol Building in a fitted suit and power pumps, her hair in a neat bun. She imagines this as Jughead pins her to her own mattress. 

“Let me be on top,” she says quickly; he nods, and they switch. 

She drives her hips into him, touching herself as she does so. 

She comes quickly, shuddering and sweaty, with a smile on her face. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She does not see Veronica and Cheryl again until their first year of college is complete, and they are back in Riverdale. Before she left New Haven, she bought a new bikini: blue instead of pink, and the underwire top provides much better support than her old halter. 

“The annual beginning-of-summer pool party at the Blossom estate is a tradition long held sacred by this generation of Riverdale youth,” says a voice in her ear. “Not to be confused with the annual end-of-summer pool party at the Blossom estate.” 

Jughead, narrating. Writing himself out of the action, as he is wont to do. 

“You’re a member of this generation of Riverdale youth,” she counters, narrowing her eyes. 

He shrugs. Drops a faded beach towel onto a pool chair, and his hat on top of it. Strips off his t-shirt and drops that on top too. 

“Hard to hold a ritual sacred when you’ve never been permitted to participate in it before.” 

Is that true, she wonders? Have Cheryl and Jason really never extended invitations? 

A small dragon seems to awaken in Betty’s chest. 

“Kidding,” Jughead says. “I always knew when the parties were. I just never wanted to go.” 

The dragon curls back into a ball, resting uneasily between her heart and stomach. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Cheryl pulls Betty aside not long after, and her eyes narrow as well. 

“Pardon me for sticking my nose into your business, dear cousin. But have you been knocking your faithful taupe suede darlings against the hobo’s hobnails?” 

“Cher…” 

Without warning, Veronica materializes at Cheryl’s side, a tray of margaritas in hand. “Ladies,” she says, nodding at the tray. Betty takes a glass, takes a sip, lets the straw roll over her tongue for a bit. 

Cheryl takes a glass, but does not put the straw to her lips. “Betty and Jughead are having  _ des relations sexuelles.  _ Did you know?” 

“Betty? Our Betty? With Riverdale’s very own Holden Caulfield?” Veronica’s eyebrows raise lightly.  _ “Quelle surprise.”  _

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” Betty groans, which earns her a stern look from both her friends.

“Elizabeth Cooper. Do you really think so poorly of us?” Veronica demands. “If Jughead Jones is what you want, then Jughead Jones you should have. Right, Cheryl?”

Cheryl, her expression curiously blank, tosses her hair over one shoulder. “He’s undeserving of you, Bettykins.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead sits at the pool’s edge, feet dangling in the deep end. Watching her, but not too closely. She steps onto the diving board and pushes off, toes pointed as she was taught during the swimming lessons of her youth. 

Underwater, the world seems much more simple. Sun on her back, but muted. Sounds in her ears; these too are muted. Jughead’s gaze on her. This, somehow, remains strong. 

She swims to him, not surfacing for breath until she’s between his knees. Then she pops up, treads water, places hands on his thighs. 

“Hey,” he says. Surprised. 

“Hey,” she replies. The dragon inside her paces circles, its sharp claws digging into her heart. 

In one short week, she will be on a train to Washington, D.C. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Her mother is out, so she brings Jughead in. 

She is pinned against the refrigerator when she says it.  _ Why then,  _ she will wonder later. Why then, when things were going so well? When he had her exactly where she wanted to be? 

She grinds against Jughead’s thigh, slotted between hers; she pulls him closer even as he presses her flesh into cool stainless steel. 

_Tell me you want me,_ she thinks, but what she says is, “I don’t expect you to wait for me.” 

Jughead stops what he’s doing, but does not yet move away. “What?” 

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”  _ Tell me you want me.  _

“I know.” 

“I’ll be gone all summer.”  _ Tell me you want me.  _

“I know that too.” 

“I’m just saying, Jug. If there’s someone else—” 

Now he steps back. Leans against the kitchen island, folding long limbs in on themselves. 

“You think there’s someone else?” 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying  _ if—”  _

“If there’s someone else.” His words are both hollow and filled with fire. “You mean, if you meet someone else. While you’re away all summer.” 

“No,” she says again. 

The front door slams behind him. She is left with an ache that cannot be relieved. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**(to be continued...)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always - I would love to know your thoughts, if you're so inclined! <3


	3. twenty

Just like that, she is gone. 

For good this time, he tells himself. Or, not for  _ good  _ for good, but gone for good from  _ that part  _ of his life. 

He scrapes the grill at Pop’s and sweeps the floors at the Bijou, and all the while, he tells himself this. He checks Betty’s social media (she barely posts; when she does, the posts are impersonal and curated) and writes the same story over and over again, and all the while, he tells himself this. 

She did not ask him to wait for her. 

Late at night, when the usual combination of too many thoughts and too many cups of coffee keep him from drifting off, he shifts this way and that on the ancient plaid couch, staring at the eternally flickering street light that illuminates Sunnyside Trailer Park. If he shifts his back a certain way, one of the cushion’s lumps will hit the knot in his shoulder just right. 

If he shifts his mind a certain way, he finds himself faced with the uncomfortable truth that he could simply have told Betty he wanted to wait for her, and that he wanted her to wait for him. 

He rolls onto his stomach. 

He wonders about Betty’s sleeping accommodations in Washington, and rolls onto his back once more.

He slips a hand into his boxers and breathes hard, biting his lip to keep himself from making a noise that his father might hear. The silent practice is one he established and perfected long ago, when thoughts about touching himself first began entering his mind. They came wrapped in hazy silhouettes, then: Lisa Fremont, Beatrix Kiddo, Veronica Mars. 

Betty Cooper. 

(So he has a type. He’s made peace with that.) 

Jughead comes into his hand, just like he did in high school. He carefully extracts the hand from his boxers, just like he did in high school, and wipes himself off in the trailer’s tiny bathroom, just like he did in high school. 

In the chipped mirror above the sink, he examines his own reflection. In high school, he had felt no shame over masturbating; he had needs, and taking care of them by himself kept him from wanting to engage in the worst of the idiotic behavior so often demonstrated by his peers. Now, though, there is shame. He sees it in his eyes; he feels it in the sweat that coats his skin. 

No wonder Betty had not asked him to wait. No wonder she had not offered to wait. Betty Cooper does not wait. Betty Cooper has never waited. She had created a whole summer opportunity for herself, created it and seized it and is undoubtedly kicking ass at it—and here he is, working the jobs he’d worked for his entire adolescence, sleeping on his dad’s sofa, jerking off to memories of her. 

  
  
  
  
  


In his off hours, he writes furiously. This time, he does not write about Betty. He writes instead about Riverdale. Layers of dead leaves on the forest floor, layers of rust on the town’s bedraggled midcentury infrastructure, layers of grease charred into the edges of the grills at Pop’s—these become Jughead’s subjects. He adds onto them, heaping thoughts and tangents and analysis onto his pages like so much foam rubber on a drive-in movie monster. 

(He will not succumb to blank verse. He will not. _ Real _ writing, he knows, cannot be reproduced with refrigerator magnets.) 

He writes about the half-abandoned downtown and the gum he chisels off seat bottoms once a week at the Bijou. He writes about his past, obliquely, spinning his narrator into a boy who imagines a better life but inexorably succumbs to the undertow. The what-ifs. The roads he did not take. 

What he sees now, what he had not seen before and what Betty saw all along, is that Yale is not the endpoint.  _ You got into a good college; now what?  _ A whole year wasted, his focus only on  _ staying  _ in the good college. Belonging to it. Now, he shifts his gaze to the world outside of New Haven. 

Yale is not the end. Yale is the means to the end. 

In the mornings, before his shifts start and before the summer humidity becomes oppressive, he stalks the aisles of the public library, running his fingers over ancient cloth-covered tomes, imagining a faded gold  _ Jones  _ pressed into the spines. 

Late at night, after his shifts end and after Pop cuts the air conditioning, Jughead remains at the diner, typing over half-eaten plates of leftover fries as salty rivulets of sweat roll down his back. 

(Even in the oppressive humidity, his faithful hat remains atop his head.) 

He watches the people of Riverdale. 

His end will be a publishing contract. 

Yale is the means to that end. 

He layers four thousand words into thick, slablike paragraphs, stacking and scraping until the page is so dense even he has lost all sense of proportion. Then he pulls up the email address of the least offensive of the literary journals, loads up his .docx file, and hits  _ send.  _

Seven days later, he gets a response. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He hasn’t even been thinking about his story. Not much. Not since he’d received an auto-response warning him that it could take up to a month before he heard one way or another, and especially not since the unexpected return of Riverdale’s prodigal son. In fact, since Jason Blossom walked through the doors of Pop’s, pale and freckled and flanked by his parents, Jughead has thought of little else. 

Jason Blossom, three years Jughead’s senior, who’d split for Stanford and their elite water polo team not long after he’d also split Jughead’s lip open for no particular reason. Jason, who has refused to return to Riverdale for so long that even his devoted little sister no longer speaks of him—to Jughead’s knowledge, anyway, although it’s not as though he actually  _ should  _ know much about Cheryl’s conversational proclivities. 

Four years since they last met. Jason must have graduated from Stanford. From what Jughead can glean based on Clifford and Penelope’s conversation, captured in bits and snippets as he buses tables, Jason has graduated from Stanford without securing gainful employment. 

Jason has returned, not for nothing, but to take his rightful place as heir to the Blossom maple syrup empire. 

For a moment, Jughead wonders what  _ that  _ must feel like: failing upwards, right into your family’s multimillion dollar business. 

He wonders, but he does not learn, because Jason Blossom sits sullen at the Formica table, and utters nary a word. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


_ I don’t think this piece is the right fit for us,  _ says the email from the journal’s managing editor, or assistant editor, or something. __

“Fuck,” he mutters. 

_ But—  _

But. What a useless word, he thinks, his fingers drumming on the well-worn spot next to his trackpad. But. 

_ But it’s good. And we could use some new blood around here. Would you consider joining the staff?  _

  
  
  
  
  


“New blood” turns out to be a very loose turn of phrase. Joani herself has been on staff for only one semester. In the fall, she will be a sophomore, like him. 

Unlike him, she has already declared a major. Jughead  _ will  _ declare a major, when he has to, and unless his brain becomes drastically rewired between now and then, he will declare a major in English. 

“Molecular, cellular, and developmental biology,” she tells him, during their first sort-of-face-to-face meeting. 

(Jughead  _ hates  _ web chats, and not just because his laptop’s webcam is shit.) 

“I want to go to med school,” she continues. 

“Then what are you—” 

She shrugs. “It’s good to be well-rounded.” 

“Fuck.” He means it as—well, he’s impressed. It is an impressed  _ fuck. _

He cannot parse Joani’s reaction. He blames his unreliable internet connection for this. 

  
  
  
  
  


Jason Blossom orders milkshakes now. Maybe he had done so before he left; Jughead didn’t work at Pop’s then. But he would have bet his left pinkie that Jason never ordered milkshakes when he was looking to get out of Riverdale on his athletic prowess. 

Despite the milkshakes, Jason looks thinner now than he did when he returned to Riverdale. Then, he was lean and muscular. Now he is simply lean. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Get you anything else today?” 

Jason makes full eye contact, and it takes all the bravado Jughead can muster to hold his ground, not give in to the temptation to flinch. 

He waits. 

Eventually, Jason shakes his head, slaps a twenty on the table, and leaves without a word. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The next time Jughead asks whether he can get Jason anything else, Jason drops his eyes to the tabletop and mutters something about scoring weed. Jughead has no idea what’s worse—the fact that Jason is speaking to him as though they don’t have History-with-a-capital-H, the fact that Jason has assumed he would know where to score weed, or the fact that he  _ doesn’t _ know where to score weed. 

(The last clause is technically untrue. Jughead is 99.9 percent sure that all he’d have to do to find some weed is open his father’s bedside table.) 

Reminding himself that he is physically larger than Jason now, Jughead takes a deep, slow breath. Then, low enough that Pop can’t possibly hear, he mutters a simple, “Screw you.” 

When Jason meets his eyes this time, Jughead reads either derision or respect, and cannot for the life of him tell which one it is. 

  
  
  
  
  


By August, he has read twelve novels, written twenty thousand words of a novel of his own that he’s sure is unreadable, and sweated through innumerable white canvas aprons dotted with baked-in grease. He has also accepted the role of submissions editor for the coming fall. As of yet, there are no submissions other than his own rejected piece. 

Joani schedules regular video meetings with him nevertheless. 

He finds he doesn’t much mind. She’s from New Haven, grew up there, though neither of her parents are connected to Yale; still, she knows the city, knows the campus, gives him video tours of the lit mag offices on the days she ventures in. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The end of the month finds Jughead on the bus to New Haven with too much stuff crammed into his camping backpack and even more stuff crammed into his duffel bag. He’s wondered about Betty in the abstract, though he’s tried not to; he wonders about her in the specific now, as he watches upstate New York pass by his window. He leans his head against the pane and lets his breath fog the glass. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


They meet for the first time in person at a coffee shop a few blocks from campus. Something in Jughead’s stomach trembles as he waits for her, and it’s not the hot black coffee scorching his insides. He thinks it might be the sweat condensing on the outside of the Arnold Palmer he’s already picked up for her. 

He’s spent his fair share of time on Reddit and its ilk—found himself forced there, really, when no one in high school cared to accompany him on his deep analysis of symbolism in  _ Django Unchained _ —but never before has he spent significant time getting to know someone virtually first and in person second. 

This should not make him nervous. 

Jughead’s phone buzzes.  _ Just parked. _ A moment later, she is there: Joani Jumpp, in the flesh. She pushes a pair of sunglasses to the top of her head, scans the cafe, and lights up when her eyes land on him. 

  
  
  
  
  


He likes Joani, he realizes. He likes her as a person and as a friend. He likes the way she chews on the end of a straw while she types. He likes the way she wears nearly the same outfit every day, black leggings and an oversized gray Yale sweatshirt that he eventually realizes she owns in triplicate; this seems to him to indicate a distinct lack of tolerance for the bullshit of fashion culture, or whatever it is. 

“I like Joani,” Archie tells him, after Joani’s left their common room to go back to her own quarters. 

Jughead knows he likes Joani, but nevertheless finds himself surprised to be admitting as much out loud to Archie. 

Archie grins. “You asked her out yet?” 

He has not. He likes Joani. He knows she is cute, objectively speaking. This has not yet translated into a desire to kiss her, or delicately remove her black-framed glasses before stripping the oversized gray Yale sweatshirt from her short, curvy frame. 

“Dude,” Archie sighs. 

“You think I should?” 

“Why wouldn’t you?” He crumples his empty soda can in one hand and tosses it across the room, where it lands precisely in the wastepaper basket. “She likes  _ you.  _ I can tell.” 

Jughead does not know why he wouldn’t ask Joani out, and so he does, later that week. It’s not as hard as he imagines it should be, and after she’s said yes, he lies awake, wondering if that means he’s done the right thing or the wrong one. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He takes her to the movies: a cliché, perhaps, but he can’t think of anything else that he could afford. She holds his hand in the dark, and she holds it in the light, too. 

The effort it takes not to compare Joani’s body to Betty’s—not to pit them against each other in a sadistic contest that only he is aware exists—proves far more draining to Jughead than the sex itself. 

“I want to stay with you tonight,” she says, after their first time together. “Is that okay?” 

Jughead, hung on the word  _ want,  _ can only nod. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


They run into Betty, because of course they run into Betty. Or, rather, Betty runs into them. Of course Betty runs into them; they’re working the lit magazine booth during the fall organization fair, casting their nets for new recruits. Betty smiles, is polite, and seems to intuit that he and Joani are dating without being told. Joani smiles, is polite, and says she’s excited to meet one of Jughead’s oldest friends. 

Betty laughs. It’s a pretty little laugh that apparently echoes in Joani’s mind as long as it echoes in his, because later that night, she asks him what on earth Betty meant by it. 

“I’m not sure I’d really call us  _ friends,” _ he says. “More like…” 

“She was your girlfriend?” 

“Not exactly that, either.” He shifts on his mattress, adjusting his sole pillow so that Joani can have more of it. “We sort of had a thing.”

“You mean you slept together?” asks Joani, who appreciates precision. 

He nods. 

“Like, once? Or…” 

“More than that.” 

“How many more times?” 

“I don’t know. On and off all last spring.” It seems prudent, if not entirely honest, to overlook high school in this moment. 

“Oh.” She pulls her knees into her chest, hugging them close. “And you never—you never  _ defined _ anything?” 

Irritation sweeps across Jughead, though he’s not sure why. “No.” 

“That’s insane.” 

He shrugs. “I guess Betty isn’t one for labels.” 

“What about you, though?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Like, I told my parents I have a boyfriend. Should I not have done that? They want to meet you.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On October 2nd, he wakes up to an extremely early  _ Happy birthday!  _ text from Betty, of all people.  _ I know you don’t want to acknowledge it, but I’m saying it anyway.  _

Joani, stirring beside him, mutters “What was that?” 

“Nothing.” He realizes only now that he has not told her today is his birthday, and is self-aware enough to understand that  _ boyfriend’s birthday _ is information she would almost certainly want to know. “Forgot to mute my phone.”

_ Thanks, _ he writes back, before deleting the text. 

Betty sends a smiley face. He lets it be for six hours, then deletes that too. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Midterms go well for him. He thinks, anyway. Joani’s midterms are harder; she’s taking organic chemistry. He doesn’t see or hear from her for six days, and understands why not.

Ensconced in his favorite study carrel with headphones securely in place, he almost misses the passing of an all-too-familiar figure in skinny jeans and taupe suede boots. Her golden locks bounce freely with each confident step. She is wearing big, weird, dangly earrings. They suit her. 

He nods. 

She nods. 

He packs up his studying and stalks to the lit mag offices, where he makes a furious round of edits on submissions that don’t require such. What are these authors doing that he is not, he wonders? What makes their work suitable for publication over his? If he is not qualified to write for the lit mag, what makes him qualified to edit it? 

Red pen, red pen, red pen. By the time Jughead is finished, his hands resemble Lady Macbeth’s. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


By the time Halloween comes around, he has been to three dinners with the Jumpps: two out at restaurants, one at their home. The food in his house cafeteria is good, but Mrs. Jumpp’s is better. 

(Joani sees them nearly every weekend. He’d find it odd that she goes home so often, but then again, they  _ do  _ only live ten miles away.) 

“Well,” says Mr. Jumpp, “if you do decide not to go home for Thanksgiving, Jughead, you’d be more than welcome to spend it here, with us.” 

Jughead swallows hard. 

“We’ll make up the air mattress in the office—” 

“Jeremy!” Mrs. Jumpp swats her husband good-naturedly with her cloth napkin. 

“Kidding, kidding. I’m sure you’d end up sneaking into Joani’s room anyway.” 

Joani rolls her eyes at her parents. “Ignore them, Jughead.” 

He feels obligated to protest anyway, and raises both hands. “I’m a perfect gentleman,” he says. “No…no hanky-panky.” 

It is the correct response. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“I can’t believe you brought a car to campus.” 

“I can’t believe  _ you’ve  _ been taking buses and trains back and forth,” Betty shoots back. She twists, looking over her shoulder, and puts the car in reverse. “I also can’t believe you decided to come back to Riverdale for Thanksgiving.” 

He shrugs, although he’s sure Betty won’t see the gesture. “Wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t offered me the ride.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Neither Jughead nor his father has ever figured out how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey. Their usual feast takes place at Pop’s, where (in slight deference to the holiday) they subject themselves to turkey burgers instead of the superior beef. It’s not the best of Thanksgiving spreads, to be sure, but it’s their tradition, and Jughead finds he’s more than annoyed when he wakes up on Thursday morning and is told that this year, there’s a change of plans.

There’s a twinge in his back, too. He’s twenty. He shouldn’t be in so much pain from sleeping on the couch. 

F.P. grins from the kitchen, clearly amused at his son’s displeasure. “Alice is a good cook, boy. Plus, she’s my employer. I could hardly turn down the invitation.” 

“You’ve been working there for years. How the hell is there still stuff to fix at her house?” 

“It’s a bona fide country estate. It’s not gonna keep itself up.” He crosses into the trailer’s living room with an extra cup of coffee, which he hands to Jughead. “Dress up nice, okay?” 

“Nicely,” Jughead mutters. 

“What?” 

“Nothing.” He takes a sip of coffee. It’s terrible.

  
  
  
  
  


He dresses in what he brought. It’s fine. His father’s put a tie on for the occasion, but hasn’t bothered to shave, which Jughead figures makes them about even. 

“You look nice, Mr. Jones,” Betty says. She also looks nice, in a simple wool skirt and fitted sweater—but then, when has Betty ever not looked nice? “You too, Jug,” she adds. 

“What, in this old thing?” He tries to drip with sarcasm. It’s harder to do when his sweater actually  _ is  _ an old thing. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“I miss you.” 

“I’ll be back in New Haven on Sunday,” he tells Joani, before quickly getting back to what Betty had said about what her mother had said she’d seen Jason Blossom up to just a week previously. 

Joani waits for him to wind down. “Who’s Jason Blossom again?” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Though snow seems to be threatening, it holds off as Betty bumps their car over the railroad tracks and out of town. Jughead, unable to wait even one second longer, digs into their Pop’s bag for a fistful of french fries. 

“So, Betty. Any chance I might convince you to chauffeur me back and forth to our hometown for the rest of our college careers?” He swallows. “I can pay in Pop’s takeout and heavily annotated editions of novels you’ve probably already read.” 

“You don’t have to buy me burgers,” she says, and then, “I can give you a ride home at Christmas, sure. But I’m not going back in the spring. I thought you knew.” 

“You’re dropping out?” 

“What? No, of course not. I’m going abroad for the spring semester.” 

“You are?” 

“I thought you knew.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Betty’s going to Dublin in the spring.”

“Cool,” Joani says, in a tone indicating she couldn’t care less. 

He wraps his arm around Joani’s, takes her hand, strokes his thumb over her wrist just as she likes. This isn’t about Betty, he wants to tell her, but about him. Despite knowing perfectly well that study abroad programs exist, not once has it occurred to Jughead that  _ he  _ might apply for one. 

She goes back to her place not long after that, citing the impending snow, and he does not try to convince her to stay. When the flakes begin to fall—slowly, gently, the fat fluffy kind that feel like dreams—Jughead is already at his window, staring blankly at the night sky. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


In the few short weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break, he sees Betty more than he’d seen her the previous months combined, as though the campus has suddenly shrunk in size and cut its enrollment by ninety percent. She is, somehow, always there. She walks past his study carrel in the library; she walks past him in various hallways. He runs into her at his off-campus coffee shop of choice, not once but half a dozen times. She is at two of the three parties which Joani insists he attend. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” she says at the third, green eyes twinkling brilliantly under colored fairy lights. 

“Betty. Hi.” Joani, already holding his hand, squeezes it tighter. “Come on, Jughead. Let’s go find some drinks.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“It was your pre-med crowd,” Jughead remarks, after they’ve left. “Why was Betty there? She’s not pre-med.” 

“Why were  _ you  _ there?” Joani counters. He’s ruffled her feathers, he knows; Yale does not technically have a program called  _ pre-med,  _ and she is always annoyed when he refers to it as such. 

“Fair point.” 

“Why was Archie there, if we’re asking these questions?” 

Jughead chuckles. “Archie’s at every party. I’d be more concerned if he hadn’t been there.” 

He stays the night in her room, sleeping not one wink, and blames his restlessness on the cramped twin extra-long. The bed, and not the looming specter of finals week, when he likely won’t see Joani for even a minute. The bed, and not finals week, and not the time he’s about to spend in Riverdale with only his dad and Pop Tate for company. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Snow threatens their drive. It threatens, but the skies hold back, for which Jughead is grateful. Betty is taking all her things from New Haven, and her backseat and trunk are so crammed with her belongings that Jughead’s duffel and backpack have been wedged in the front, with his feet. The last thing he needs for a weather delay to keep him in the car even longer. 

“You’re coming to the Blossom Christmas party, right?” 

Jughead shifts in the passenger seat. He would kill, literally kill, to be able to stretch his knees right now. “I’m not invited.” 

Betty snorts. “Cheryl asked me to ask you if you were coming.” 

“I haven’t heard a word from Cheryl. Does she extend invitations by osmosis?” 

“Generally, yes. Were you expecting one of those little cards like in elementary school?” 

The thought of a Blossom Manor Christmas party makes Jughead’s limbs heavy. It makes his head foggy. He leans back, wedging himself into the little gap between seat and door.

“You can’t miss this one, Jug. Not with Jason making his first appearance in however many years.” 

“Mmfph,” Jughead agrees. 

The car rumbles down the highway. The heater purrs. Jughead closes his eyes for what might be thirty seconds or two hours. When he opens them again, Betty has just pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop. She finds a spot; she cuts the engine. 

“Too many all-nighters?” she asks, cheerfully. Perkily. For a moment, Jughead considers throwing his beanie at her. 

“How come you’re so chipper?” 

“Adderall.” She unbuckles her seat belt, then looks at him, amused. “I’m  _ kidding,  _ Jughead. I haven’t taken that stuff since high school.”

He does not know how to respond. 

“Anyway, I have to pee. And I want coffee. So I stopped.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


There is a line for the ladies’ room and no line for the men’s, so Jughead buys the latte he knows Betty will want, adds her sprinkles of cinnamon and vanilla powder, and is ready and waiting with both it and his own black drip when she finally emerges. 

“Thanks.” She takes the offered cup and heads for the napkin bar. 

“I put that stuff in for you already.” 

Betty pauses, her expression unreadable. “Oh. Okay.” Then she hands the cup back to him. “Hold this for a minute?” 

She conjures an elastic from thin air and secures her hair into a ponytail. 

“Let’s go,” she says, heading for the door. 

He follows. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(to be continued...) 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things that are bad for fic-writing productivity: [gestures at the entire United States, then washes hands for twenty seconds]
> 
> If you're still with me, thank you, and I'd love to know your thoughts when you have a moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Please join me in wishing Sully the happiest of birthdays!


End file.
